Headhunters Bring More Rock Than Twang To Toad's

What was always fun about listening to the Kentucky Headhunters was the balance the band struck between country and rock music -- drawing the best from both.

But no more, country-music fans. Sadly, the Kentucky Headhunters' show at Toad's Place in New Haven Thursday night rocked too much and didn't have enough twang.

With the departure of the Phelps brothers, most notably singer Ricky Lee, the band has lost its soul and now sounds like a decent garage band covering Kentucky Headhunters hits.

The Headhunters are not well served by their new-old singer Mark Orr, who sang with an early version of the Headhunters called Itchy Brother, which broke up in the early '80s after failing to land a recording contract. Thursday's show was a good demonstration of why.

It may be unfair to compare Orr with Phelps, but comparisons are inevitable.

Orr just doesn't have the range and bite that Phelps brought to the Headhunters' songs. He couldn't match Phelps' threatening strut in "Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine," the rollick of "Dumas Walker" or the sheer strength of "Oh, Lonesome Me." The songs were just ghosts of their former selves.

The band's other fine musicians tried to fill the gaps, and they did all right for a while. But those guitar solos by Greg Martin just got a little monotonous.

The more than 90-minute set featured a lot of the Headhunters' tunes from the band's first two albums and some songs from the as-yet untitled new album due in February. Rock fans may like this new recording better than the country fans.

Their first single off that album, "Honky Tonk Walkin' ," a video of which could be seen on TNN starting Friday, tried for vintage Headhunters but ran thin, even though it had the most country sound of the new batch of songs.

"Freedom Stomp" featured a fun but bizarre drum solo from the bare-chested Fred Young, who dispensed with his sticks two-thirds of the way through, reverting to just his palms to bang on the

drums (prompting someone in the audience to yell out "Day-O").

And there were some other good touches. Orr, who looked and acted like a sort of bedraggled David Lee Roth, excelled on such blues songs as "Litlle Red Rooster," and the band kept its irreverent sense of humor with its very un-Patsy Cline send-up of "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

But it was the past Headhunters songs that did not satisfy. Their version of "Ragtop" sounded like a Led Zepplin cover, and their cover of "Spirit in the Sky" (which started with the opening riff from Zepplin's "Whole Lotta Love") aimed straight for those rock fans.

As Itchy Brother, the band thought of itself as "best-known unknown band in America." It looks as though history is about to repeat itself